Beta
is our general term for the forms of Christian theory which were centered
on the death, rather than the teachings, of Jesus. The unexpected death
of Jesus was of course shocking to his followers, and their responses
took several forms, the earliest of them almost lost in the literature.
The first two are within the limits of what we call Alpha;
the last two define Beta.

The Alpha Position

1. Jesus
was taken directly up to Heaven at the moment of his death, and never
saw the corruption of burial, as were his two chief predecessors, the
lawgiver Moses (as in the noncanonical but contemporary document Testament
of Moses) and the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 2:11). This belief has left
several traces in the canonical literature. It lies behind what is now
the Transfiguration scene in Mark (Mk 9:2-8), where Jesus appears transfigured
with Moses and Elijah, thus vindicating his association with them (it
might be called the first Trinity). There is also what appears to be
an inadvertent inclusion of earlier belief, when Jesus says to the Penitent
Thief, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise" (Lk 22:43).
Immediate ascent to Heaven is within Jewish tradition, both ancient
and current, and did not require new theory. It was merely an appropriation
of existing theory.

2.
Jesus appeared after his death to his disciples, or at any
rate to their leading figure Peter, in a vision, assuring Peter that
Jesus was in some sense still there, and that death had not ended his
movement. This assured the followers of the ongoing validity of their
belief, and of future guidance from Heaven. The idea of the Holy Spirit
probably arose at this time. Uncertainty over whether the Spirit was
that of Jesus leading from Beyond, or that of God leading Jesus also
during his lifetime, led eventually to the Father/Son/Spirit triad.

The Beta Transition

3. Jesus
was resurrected bodily from the grave, and appeared to the disciples in
the flesh, complete with the wounds of the Crucifixion which they could
touch, thus convincing them that it was he and not another. This was,
in origin, probably an answer to those who discounted reported visions,
as merely imaginary. It was a natural enough development of the preceding
stage, by someone with a vivid imagination and a strong sense of life;
Peter comes immediately to mind. That Peter and Paul at one point agreed
about this doctrine is implicit in Paul's first visit to Jerusalem, sometime
in the 30's, to confer with Peter. The point for Paul about this originally
defensive claim had been that it corresponds with another but limited
Jewish belief, held by the Pharisees among other Jewish sects. It spoke
to Paul as a Pharisee, and it was probably this factor which led to his
acceptance of the Christianity which he had earlier persecuted. Textually,
the bodily resurrection is late in the literature; it appears in a late
stratum of Mark, and is further developed in the Second Tier Gospels,
Matthew and Luke.

4. Jesus
was a sacrifice for the sins of all, and it is through his death that
others gain eternal life. Though perhaps reinforced and enabled by the
Greek cults of dying and reviving gods, this is essentially a Jewish theoretical
development, and probably represents the influence of the Temple sacrificial
cult on the Jerusalem Christians, who were tolerated by those authorities
until the year 44. It first appears in a late stratum of Mark, and thus
is earlier than the year 44. Paul encountered this belief sometime after
he wrote 1 Thessalonians (which does not contain it), but before he wrote
Galatians (which does); that is, sometime in the early 50's, or almost
a decade later. It transformed his view of the Jewish Law, and completed
his transition from Judaism (ironically, by moving in another sense back
toward Judaism). It is not inconceivable that Paul learned it from Mark,
who (according to Acts, if carefully read) left Jerusalem in c45 to work
with Paul in Antioch. The Abrahamic motif in later Christianity, not only
in Paul but also in Matthew, has its origins here. It pushed Paul in a
more Jewish direction, and deepened his hostility to the Alpha Christians
among the churches. His violent advocacy of this theory led to the bitter
dispute, in real time, between the Epistle of James and Paul's statements
in Romans.

Like the Gospel of Matthew in several senses,
the doctrine of the Atonement represents a further drift back toward Judaism.
It is so thoroughly incorporated into the Gospel of John that the death
of Jesus in that text takes place for symbolic reasons on the same day
as the sacrifice of the lambs for the Passover feast, and not (as in earlier
tradition) after Jesus had eaten the Passover with his disciples. All
this pushed the Alpha Christians even further toward the edge of new theoretical
developments. The early Christians did not need this additional complication,
to add to their other woes, but they got it anyway. One strong feature
of the post-Pauline writings is a manifest wish to damp down this particular
difference, which was proving damaging and divisive, by incorporating
into the genuine Pauline epistles passages expressing Alpha doctrine.
This lead was also followed in some, though not all, of the deutero-Pauline
literature. That the breach was not permanently healed can be seen in
the later Johannine correspondence, which is all about splits within the
Christian community. It was this drift toward Judaism which led Marcion,
whose heritage was Alpha, to attempt to purge Christianity of its dependence
on the truth and relevance of the Jewish Scriptures.

Though Mark knew, and in a few passages in
his Gospel acknowledged, the germ of the Atonement theory, it is possible
that, though it produced an electric response in Paul, Mark personally
continued not to make very much of it. Some firm upholders of early ideas
of Jesus, among them Arius, continued to arise from the north African
Christianity on which, according to local tradition, the teaching of Mark
had an enduring effect.

The later history of Beta is essentially
the history of the later Church, which is sufficiently well known not
to require exposition here. The following are essentially footnotes, mostly
cross-references to pages elsewhere in this site.

Contents

1 Thessalonians

Paul

James vs Paul

Alpha Interpolations in Paul

The Johannine Division

Arius

These notes are provided in part to summarize
present opinion, but also to indicate possibilities for future research.
Suggestions for, or contributions to, that research will be most welcome.
Those interested may contact the Project via the mail link at the bottom
of this page.